Mon Oncle d'Amerique

Story

Following a pair of films (Stavisky, Providence) that were more conventionally narrative than his explosively experimental early works (Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad), French New Wave pioneer director Alain Resnais began a cycle of films beginning in 1980 (all written by Jean Gruault) that delved deeply into his philosophical and aesthetic concerns again. The first of these was Mon Oncle d'Amerique, starring Gérard Depardieu as one of three middle-class characters undergoing great degrees of personal stress. Presented as a docudrama of sorts with some pulp-fiction qualities, these parallel tales don't really resolve themselves within their own borders but gain another dimension of subjective resolution when Resnais ushers in a real-life scientist to discuss certain kinds of behavioral triggers in humans. The results are actually very satisfying and witty for viewers who can see the overt psychological elements not as a smug commentary on the action but a means of opening the action to a viewer's subconscious experience. Resnais takes the bold step of creating a new kind of filmed story here, and largely succeeds. --Tom Keogh